Social CRM Evolution vs. Mobile CRM Revolution

CRM technology -- along with the way we use it -- is going through an interesting patch of
development right now. In part because mobile devices are now delivering on their
potential, there's a renewed vigor around mobile CRM. At the same time, because
the case for social media's permanent status as a critically important component of
how we deal with customers, social CRM continues to gain attention and energy.

There's a lot written about the convergence of these two trends, and I agree that
together they are far more powerful than if they had evolved sequentially. But I also
think that social and mobile represent different things -- and that may help CRM
users prioritize their investments around them.

Getting Mobile Right

Mobile CRM is an evolutionary step. It takes what we've been doing in CRM and
moves it out of the office and into the field, but it doesn't change the nature of CRM
or the tasks that CRM users need to carry out to make CRM work.

It changes who
inside the business is affected by CRM -- field service personnel, for instance -- but it
doesn't change the nature of the data you track or the signals from customers you
need to track.

Social CRM is revolutionary; it signals an entirely new volume of data that you need
to track, which requires changes to the way you think about your customers and
the people in your company who deal with them. It also forces you into dealing with
conversations with the customer, the nature and volume of which you may have
never imagined.

That's why CRM vendors right now are working so hard to get mobile right -- of
the two it is the easiest to comprehend and the quickest route to revenue. Talking
to executives at the CRM vendors, it's clear that many CRM buyers are excited
about social, but they make buying decisions based on mobile.

Social is an item on
the checklist, but it's not there because most buyers have social CRM strategies
just waiting for a technology. Instead, businesses are buying CRM that has social
capabilities, then hoping to gain clarity around a social CRM strategy that can utilize
those capabilities.

That seems like a hazardous approach, but it actually makes some sense -- especially
if you realize that the vendors are all feeling their way toward delivering social CRM
capabilities too.

CRM Psychology

But mobile is different. As one vendor's CTO said, "social opens the door to a sale,
and mobile closes it." Mobile is far easier to get your head around. You know CRM?
Well, this is CRM on a mobile device. Concept successfully transmitted.

Besides being easy to understand, mobile confers other advantages on a CRM
implementation. For example, adoption is the great killer of CRM investments, but
coupling mobile CRM with the trend toward "bring your own device" (BYOD) mobile
strategies now delivers CRM to salespeople on devices of their choosing.

This is a
major psychological change in how CRM is perceived; instead of the application
salespeople are forced to sit in front of at the end of the day, it's something they can
use right in the field in near real-time on the device of their choosing -- and it can
deliver data useful in selling when and where the salesperson needs it.

The "what's
in it for me?" question for the salesperson is answered much more quickly, and
adoption rates increase as a result.

Taking Flight

Security concerns are increasingly fading as vendors attack that area of resistance,
and the result will be a mobile CRM boom in the near future. The only downside
of that is that the social CRM revolution may lose energy as the mobile CRM
evolution produces results.

Those results are important, but they shouldn't keep
your business from moving forward with exploration of a social CRM strategy as
well.

Mobile is like a new freeway that you can speed down toward your goals, but
social is like an airplane; it requires different thinking, strategic changes to the
organization and a new way of viewing the process of going from opportunity to
sale. As promising as mobile may be, it's smart not to skip one of the trips.

CRM Buyer columnist Chris Bucholtz blogs about CRM at the
CRM Outsiders. He has been a technology journalist for 17 years and has immersed himself in the world of CRM since 2006. When he's not wearing his business and technology geek hat, he's wearing his airplane geek hat; he's written three books on World War II aviation.